Lot n° 295
Estimation :
150 - 200
EUR
François Babié de Bercenay & Sulpice Imbert de la Platiere, - Lot 295
François Babié de Bercenay & Sulpice Imbert de la Platiere, Unpublished Political and Confidential Correspondence of Louis XVI, with his brothers, and several famous people, during the last years of his reign and until his death; with observations by Hélène-Maria Williams. Paris, Debray, 1803. 2 vol. in-8 of XXVIII-341 pp.; (4)-304-(8) pp., half green Russian leather, smooth spine decorated, entirely untrimmed (binding of the period). First edition. No doubt an apocryphal work; see on this subject the very long notice that Barbier wrote about it " As early as 1809 Barbier briefly pointed out in the Dictionnaire des Anonymes, the historical and literary deception of which two very mediocre writers François Babié de Bercenay and Suplice Imbert de La Platière were guilty. According to the confession of the first, nephew of the abbot of Radonvilliers (sub-preceptor of Louis XVI), these letters had been composed by the two friends as if they were playing games, and when the collection seemed sufficiently large to them, they sold it to the bookseller Levrault for the considerable sum of 2,400 francs. Levrault returned it to Miss Héléna Williams, who published it with a preface which attested to its authenticity, and accompanied each of the seventy-one letters in the collection with more or less extensive commentaries. She attached two letters to Vergennes already published during the trial of Louis XVI, four additional letters (to Breteuil, to the King of Prussia, to the abbot of Avaux, on the education of the Dauphin, and a letter from the king's brothers in Breteuil), maxims and thoughts taken largely from the Works of Stanislas Leczinski, annotations on various memoirs of Turgot and Necker, and on the 1779 manifesto against England. At the end of volume II there is also a note of omitted documents and letters which have already been published in various works. The whole was translated into English in the same year". Tourneux, IV, 20828.
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